The Dime Museum Murders

IX: The Glass-eater

The red-haired man kept the gun trained on us while his associates dragged our two unconscious sparring partners out of the alley. The pair were loaded roughly into a waiting carriage. When they returned, one of the men held a hank of coarse bailing rope. "Hands behind your backs," said the red-haired man. His voice was strangely high and musical.

"You're tying up the Great Houdini?" Harry asked incredulously. "This is-"

"Shut up, Harry," I said, as a blindfold was slipped over my eyes and tied roughly at the back.

"Nobody needs to get hurt," said the high voice. "We're just taking a little ride."

It's fortunate that gangster movies were still some years away, or I imagine that phrase would have filled me with dread. I wouldn't say I was thrilled about "taking a little ride'' in any case, but I didn't know enough to conjure visions of cement overshoes. Harry, for his part, was busy muttering about the indignity of having his hands tied in a "saucy little half-hitch." Happily, our captors seemed to be ignoring him.

We were bundled into a covered carriage and I heard a rap on the roof to signal the driver, who whipped the horses to a brisk trot. In spite of my blindfold, which smelled faintly of salted fish, I was able to hold onto a loose thread of where we were going. I knew the area well, and could track our progress by a variety of sounds bobbing up through the constant clatter of the wooden wheels on granite slabs-the shrill cry of a fruit vendor, the gaseous roar of the elevated train, the tinny wheeze of an organ grinder. Aromas, too, seemed much stronger to me as I sat blindfolded in the back of the carriage. The warm balm of roasting nuts mingled horribly with the sickly stench of an open sewer; the all-pervading funk of horse effluvia blended with the gritty bite of burning coal. Gradually these gave way to the sounds of birds and water, and I realized we were nearing the East River. The granite beneath our wheels now yielded to wooden planking. "We're getting out," the high voice said as the carriage drew to a halt. "Don't even think about giving us the slip." Mercifully, my brother said nothing.

Rough hands pushed me out of the carriage and I stumbled badly as I misjudged the step. Someone took hold of me at the elbow and led me forward, with the ludicrous warning "Watch your step." A change in wind signalled our progress along a dock.

"Step up," I was told. I realized with a shock, as I climbed a shallow set of stairs, that I was being helped aboard a boat of some kind. Several pairs of hands half-lifted, half-pushed me a short distance through the air, and my feet came down with a thump onto a wooden deck. I felt the gentle roll of the water beneath me. I scarcely had time to register these new sensations when I heard the thud of my brother's feet hitting the deck, and a shouted instruction to "bring 'em below."

Someone pushed my head from behind. I bent forward, passing through what was evidently a low doorway. I heard latches working and doors creaking as we passed along a short corridor, then down a steep set of step rungs.

Finally we appeared to reach our destination. I heard a low murmur of voices, and a clinging whiff of stale cigars reached my nostrils. A voice said, "Take off the blindfolds."

We were in a large but sparsely appointed ship's cabin. The furnishings were those of a warehouse rather than a sailing vessel-seven wooden filing cabinets, a dozen packing crates, four ladder-stools, and a flat, highly-polished deal table. Maps of the city covered the wall opposite us, with a spray of yellow-headed pins jabbed in at various points. Four or five young men were arrayed along the map wall, some of them standing, the others perched on stools. A much older man sat in a cane-backed swivel chair behind the deal table. He was squat and pudgy, with cool gray eyes that regarded us from behind a pair of round spectacles. A coil of white hair swept forward from the back of his head, struggling to conceal a wrinkled and spotted pate. A heavy shading of bluish stubble covered his jawline. He waited a moment as we took in our surroundings, then removed a wet panatela from his teeth. "Sorry about the rough treatment," he said. "I'm Jake Stein."

I suppose we merely stared. He certainly did not fit my boyhood impression of a legendary criminal, a man rumored to have beaten a pair of traitorous underlings to death with his bare hands. He looked instead like one of the men I saw playing chess each day in the lobby of my mother's apartment building. Perhaps his only notable feature was the coarse, labored quality of his voice, which sounded as if it had been dipped in hot oil.

"Which one of you is the Great Houdini?" he asked, gesturing with the cigar.

"I am," my brother said. "It is kind of you to receive us." His tone sounded bright and firm-his stage voice.

"What are you, some sort of circus act? The Great Houdini?"

"I am the world-renowned handcuff king and prison breaker, the justly celebrated self-liberator."

"Come again?"

"I escape from handcuffs and ropes."

"Seems to me we've got you tied up pretty good right now," Stein said, leaning back and swinging his feet onto the table.

"These bonds?" Harry gave an indignant snort. "Child's play. If your associate had not pointed a gun at me, I would have disposed of these ropes in an instant."

"That so?" Stein squinted hard at Harry's face, trying to make up his mind about something. "I'd like to see that. Why don't you just-"

Stein never finished the sentence. Harry's shoulders twitched, and a grimace washed over his features. "Child's play," he said, tossing the untied ropes onto the table.

My stomach clenched as I watched the play of anger and fascination on Stein's features. Clearly he did not care for brash young men. After a tense pause, the old man apparently decided to find my brother amusing. He grinned and clapped his hands. Harry took a bow as Stein's henchmen followed suit. I took advantage of the appreciative climate to escape from my own bonds, though no one seemed to notice.

"Not bad!" Jake Stein said in his painful-sounding growl. "You say you can escape from anything?"

"Nothing on earth can hold me a prisoner," my brother assured him. "The Great Houdini can escape from anything."

"I'll have to introduce you to my wife sometime," said Stein, a remark that drew energetic hilarity from the men along the back wall. Harry grinned weakly. I would guess that he heard this joke perhaps seven thousand times over the course of his lifetime.

"So"-Stein took a drag on his cigar-"you must be the guy who keeps trying to bust out of Mulberry Street, huh?"

"You know of this?"

"Jake Stein knows things, kid. Remember that. Let me know if you ever figure a way out. Could be useful."

This prompted another outburst of mirth from the boys at the back.

Stein pointed his cigar at us. "I guess you boys are pretty good with your fists," he said. "I might just have some work for you some time." The growl trailed off and he gazed at the ceiling, pondering the manner in which the Brothers Houdini might make themselves useful to his operations. For me, this prospect seemed about as attractive as Harry's plan to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

Fortunately, Harry did not entirely apprehend the nature of Stein's interest. "Well," he said, "until recently my wife and I were playing at Huber's Museum. Prior to that we enjoyed a lengthy engagement with the Welsh Brothers Circus. In addition to our public performances, we are available for birthday parties, family gatherings, and social functions of all descriptions. I also offer a comprehensive series of lessons in magic and sleight of hand."

Stein's eyes narrowed for a moment, but the grin stayed fixed in place. He threw a don't-this-beat-all look at the back-wall boys. Without realizing it, Harry had dodged a bullet.

"Okay, Houdini," Stein said, "you've been looking for me all over town. What was it you wanted?"

"Two friends of mine have been brutally murdered," Harry began. "They were an elderly couple who-"

"The Graffs. Ran the Toy Emporium."

"Precisely. I am seeking information about this terrible tragedy."

Stein folded his arms across his chest. "May I ask why you think I would know anything about it, Houdini?"

Harry swept his right hand over his head, a stage flourish. "Because, sir, Jake Stein knows things."

It was the right answer. Stein grinned as he swung his feet off the table and knocked his cigar over an ashtray. "I'm not sure what sort of help you're looking for, kid. The old lady got cut up by a gang. The old man strung himself up in a jail cell. What else do you want to know?"

"I am not entirely happy with that explanation," Harry said. "Not happy at all."

Stein cleared his throat-a horrible, gravelled sound. "You want me to find the kids that carved the old lady, is that it? Look, kid, I'm not in the business of-"

"I do not think that Mrs. Graff's death was the work of a gang."

"No?" Stein leaned forward, genuinely curious. "Why not?"

Harry answered at great length, summarizing the events of the past three days, beginning with our summons to the Wintour mansion. Stein listened closely, interrupting twice to ask for clarification, nodding appreciatively at our exploit in the Cairo Club, and wondering aloud over the puzzle of Branford Wintour's study.

"Harrington, is it?" Stein asked when Harry had finished. "The name was Evan Harrington?"

"Yes."

"Harrington did the job on Wintour, then laced the old couple to keep them mum-that's what you think?"

"Laced?"

Stein sighed. "Killed. You think Harrington killed them to cover his tracks?"

"That is my theory."

Stein gave a hot, gasping noise that I took to be a chuckle. "Evan Harrington. A wooden nickel of a name if ever I heard one."

"I am aware of that, of course," Harry said. "It may surprise you to learn that my name is not actually Harry Houdini."

"Is that so, Ehrich?"

My brother stiffened.

"Ehrich Weiss," Stein continued, "and his brother Theodore. Sons of the Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss. A good man, your father."

Harry gave a faint cry of surprise. "You knew him?"

"Not to speak to. I heard him two or three times, though. Morning services. I liked the look of him. Very devout. Not like these young ones today. I was sorry to hear he'd passed."

Harry paused, momentarily bewildered. "It is kind of you," he said.

"How is your mother?"

"She is well, thank you."

"Good." Stein bit the end off a fresh cigar. "I'm still not quite certain how I can help you," he said, as one of the wall-boys stepped forward to light his cigar. "What is it that you want from me?"

"Let us assume that the Graffs were killed by a single individual, as I have outlined. I wondered if these acts might suggest a pattern to you, if you perhaps recognized a certain-well-"

"Do I recognize the work," Stein said helpfully. "Isn't that what you're asking?"

"Yes. Yes, sir. This person would have to be clever enough to slip in and out of Mr. Wintour's locked study without leaving any trace, but also brutal enough to attack Mrs. Graff with such unwonted savagery."

"You say these toys are valuable?"

"They are not toys."

"Well, whatever they are. Worth a few bucks?"

"Indeed. But I do not think that is why Mr. Wintour was killed."

"I'd have to agree," Stein said. "Nobody I know would go to all that trouble for a bunch of-what was it you called them?"

"Automatons."

"Yes." He sent a cloud of smoke toward the low ceiling. "Here's my problem, Houdini. I can think of any number of punch-and-peel men who could have slipped into Wintour's study without too much trouble. And I know maybe a dozen knife artists who might have done the old lady and made it look like gang boys-if they had a reason to do it. The old man in the cell, I don't know from that. Maybe he killed himself, maybe he didn't. But you see my problem? You're asking me

if I recognize the work. If I were looking, I'd be looking for two guys. Not one."

Harry weighed this answer carefully. "In my profession," he said slowly, "one must be able to do many things. When I work in a dime museum, I am sometimes called upon to be a strong man, or a juggler, or a clown. Once I even ran a ghost show. A talented performer wears many hats."

The old man rubbed the stubble on his chin. The door opened behind us and a slight man wearing a black suit and a homburg slipped into the room. Stein did not acknowledge him. "In my business," Stein told us, "matters are different. You got a leaky pipe, you call a plumber. You got a broken door, you call a carpenter. Do you understand me?"

Harry nodded. "Two different men."

"Put it this way," he said. "Whoever killed Wintour had nothing to do with killing the old lady." He looked up at the man in the Homburg, then back at Harry. "You really think she got killed by a working man? You're sure it wasn't just gang boys?"

"I'm sure of it," Harry said.

Stein leaned back in his chair and swung his feet back onto the table. His eyes came to rest on me. "You don't say much, do you, Theodore?"

"Not a whole lot, no," I said.

"But you saw what went on in the toy shop?"

"Uh, yes, I did." I shuffled my feet, self-conscious at having been put on the spot.

"And who do you think killed her?" Stein grinned behind his cigar, enjoying my discomfiture.

I stopped shuffling and looked him straight in the eye, damned if I was going to let him stare me down. "I don't know who killed her," I said. "I don't know if it was a gang of street thugs, or someone trying to make it look like street thugs, and frankly I don't care. All I know is that she was a sweet old lady and she deserved better than to get slit up the belly like a brook trout. My brother and I are chasing all around town looking for someone who might know something. Maybe we'll find something, maybe we won't. Maybe we'll do some good, maybe not. It's better than sitting home with a book."

Harry was looking at me with an expression of interest and surprise, as though I'd just pulled a dripping octopus from a top hat, instead of the customary rabbit. Stein puffed his cigar and glanced again at Homburg man, who shook his head.

"So all you boys want to do is find who did this to the sweet old lady, is that it?"

"And her husband," said Harry.

"Mr. Stein," said Homburg man. "This is not-"

Stein held up a hand to silence him. "This thing," Stein said, "I don't like to see this sort of thing on my patch. It… doesn't look well. But I don't want to stir the pot too much. Someone might take offense. But I like you boys. I'm going to-"

Homburg man renewed his objections. Stein silenced him again with a look that could have melted iron.

"I don't know who killed your friends," Stein continued. "I'm not even sure I need to know. But I know who I'd ask about it, if I were you."

"That would be very helpful," Harry said.

Stein wrote a name and address down on a slip of paper. "This gentleman is a pretty cool bean. You want something from him, you got to have money or you got to have muscle. You two don't seem to me like the money type."

"No," Harry admitted.

Stein pushed it across the table at us. "There is one thing," he said.

"Yes?" Harry asked, reaching for the paper.

"Anyone finds out where you got this name, then you boys have got a problem with me."

"That won't happen," Harry said. "We are unusually good at keeping secrets."

"Huh," Stein snorted, still amused by my brother. "I just might have some work for you boys," he said. "I just might at that."

I looked at the cold, grinning face behind the soggy cigar. I hoped he was talking about magic lessons.